We pulled together a list of currently available smart watches that met these criteria from Apple, Android Wear, and Samsung. Our list included watches from tech brands like Apple, Asus, and Samsung, as well as fashion labels like Fossil, Nixon, and Tag Heuer. Then, we cross-checked with respected review sites, such as Tech Radar and PCMag, as well as tech retailer Best Buy, to make sure we weren’t leaving out any hidden gems.
Outside of the Fossil Group, we're waiting for the Casio Pro Trek WSD-F30 and Montblanc Summit 2. The Summit 2 will be the first smartwatch to run on Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 3100 processor, which aims to make a raft of improvements including beefing up the battery life. It's also expected to be joined by a new Louis Vuitton smartwatch, which will run on that new Snapdragon chip.
Out of a vast field of similar watches, we picked the Q Explorist and Q Venture because of their middle-of-the-road prices, wide availability, and variety of styles. These two models are flagships for the Fossil Group’s collection of 14 style brands producing more than 300 planned smartwatches. This means that if you find a smartwatch from Diesel, Skagen, Tag Heuer, Kate Spade, Movado, or another Fossil-connected brand that fits your style better, you should feel free to buy it, because it will have roughly the same internal hardware as our picks.

The Q watches do not have built-in GPS or heart-rate sensors, and aside from one model (the black silicone strap Explorist), they are not made for heavy exercise tracking. The watches’ IP67 rating means that they’re dustproof and ready for rain, and that they can survive a short dunk in water less than 3 feet deep. For tracking your walking, movement, light bike rides or occasional runs or hikes, though, the watch does fine.

Get connected and stay up-to-speed with Misfit smartwatches, a family of complex timepieces that have been designed to help you live, work and play a little smarter. If you're looking for a smartwatch that can do far more than just tell you the time, consider a timepiece crafted from premium materials that showcase both its strength and its style. With a variety of customization options, you can personalize any Misfit smart watch to suit your unique personality, and then configure it to stay in-sync with your day-to-day activities.

As of 4 September 2013, three new smartwatches have been launched: the Samsung Galaxy Gear, Sony SmartWatch 2,[62] and the Qualcomm Toq.[63] PHTL, a company based in Dallas, Texas, completed is crowd-funding process on Kickstarter for its HOT Watch smartwatch in September 2013. This device enables users to leave their handsets in their pockets, since it has a speaker for phone calls in both quiet and noisy environments.[64] In a September 2013 interview, Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky stated that his company was not interested in any acquisition offers,[65] but revealed in a November 2013 interview, that his company has sold 190,000 smartwatches, the majority of which were sold after its Kickstarter campaign closed.[60]

If you wear the Q Explorist close to your hand, its case size and protruding center button can activate when you bend your wrist back, or if you’re wearing thicker gloves. The worst that happens is that Google Assistant is activated, and it either does nothing or tries to ask Google whatever nonsense the microphone picks up inadvertently. That can be annoying, and may cause you to size your watch band a bit larger, so the watch sits up your arm a bit more, clear of your wrist joint. Sadly, Wear OS lacks a “left-handed mode” to allow for turning the watch and its gestures the other direction.
The operating system you choose depends solely on the type of smartphone you have because the smart watch is paired with your smartphone. If you own an Android smartphone, your smart watch should have Android Wear or Tizen. If you own an iPhone, choose an Apple Watch. For example, the Samsung Gear S3 runs Tizen and is compatible with both the Android and iPhone.
Tizen is a Linux-based operating system for devices, including smartphones/tablets, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) devices, smart TVs, laptops/desktops and other platforms. Tizen is a project within the Linux Foundation and is governed by a Technical Steering Group (TSG) composed of Samsung and Intel among others. Samsung released the Samsung Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, Samsung Gear S, Samsung Gear S2 and Samsung Gear S3 running Tizen.[86]
When you do switch to the OLED display, you are in TicWatch Pro’s Smart Mode, and you can perform all of the features and functions that are available in the smartwatch. However, switching to the low-power FTSN LCD display puts the watch in its Essential Mode. The nice thing is that when you switch back to Smart Mode. all of the heart rate and steps info gathered by the watch’s Essential Mode are synced up and transferred to the onboard Wear OS. As you might expect, the battery life in Essential Mode can last up to 30 days, while using the smartwatch in Smart Mode cuts that battery life down to just two days.
Fossil’s Q Explorist and its smaller-wrist counterpart the Q Venture are well-made, responsive, fashionable Wear OS smartwatches that offer a lot of color and band options, making them the best option around. They ably run Wear OS (more on the pros and cons of Wear OS itself in a bit) and convey your phone’s notifications to your wrist. Their buttons engage with clean clicks, the Explorist’s center crown moves through lists and notifications much more effectively than swiping, and both screens are responsive and clear.
Dealing with notifications on a Wear OS watch has gotten better as the phone version of Android has improved its already impressive notification system and as phone app developers have taken advantage of new interactions. Many apps now send notifications with action options: For example, you can check a to-do as done, approve a payment, respond to a message, or, most often, just acknowledge something. The Q Explorist and Venture are no different than most Wear OS watches in relaying notifications, but in our testing they rarely showed lag in processing them, nor was either watch’s screen unresponsive to swiping or tapping options. Each watch’s vibration motor provides just enough buzz and movement to avoid missing things while not feeling like electric collar training for humans.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: The Vívosport’s screen is highly sensitive to incidental brushes and touches; we ended up activating the screen auto-lock feature, a small annoyance. Compared with a dedicated GPS running watch, the GPS tracking on any fitness band takes longer to connect to satellites; and it’s easier to see your pace and other statistics on a running watch’s larger LCD screen while moving than on a fitness band’s relatively miniscule display. Garmin doesn’t have the motivating social network of Fitbit, so it’s less likely that your friends or coworkers will connect and challenge you, or that a corporate fitness challenge will work with your Vívosport. A fitness band falls short of a full-featured smartwatch, because typically it won’t give you a voice assistant, let you install apps, or let you interact with phone notifications, and many of those notifications will be difficult to read on the Vívosport’s small screen.
If you like traditional analog watches and want just a few smart features, the Cookoo 2 might be more appealing than its more full-featured rectangular competitors. Behind its hands is a monochrome display that delivers basic notifications: incoming calls (with Caller ID), missed calls, texts, e-mail, social media alerts (for WhatsApp, Line, QQ, WeChat, Skype, Facebook, Twitter), and calendar alerts. Just bear in mind that it's a very basic smartwatch, with little configurability.
Two watches from LG, the Watch Sport and Watch Style, were designed in collaboration with Google to launch Android Wear 2.0. The Sport is loaded with features, offering integrated GPS, LTE calls and texting (sharing a phone number with an Android phone), a speaker, a heart-rate monitor, two buttons, a rotating crown, and NFC support for using Android Pay directly from the watch. Reviews, however, suggest that the Sport suffers for those add-ons in thickness, comfort, and appearance. The Style, for $100 less than the Sport, is thinner and more comfortable; it offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but has a look that The Verge’s Dan Seifert describes as “kind of cheap” with a “homely design.” Neither model is easy to find at online vendors, especially in all colors.
But the Ionic, the first of Fitbit's devices to include an SpO2 monitor, came out more than one year ago. It's frustrating to hear about exciting features that are "coming soon," when "soon" ultimately means not weeks or months, but years. While I understand it takes time and effort to develop features like this (especially if Fitbit hopes to pursue medical device clearance or approval from the FDA in the future), I don't think Fitbit should hype features that it isn't ready to let users put to the test.
Of the scores of Wear OS by Google (also called Wear OS, and formerly Android Wear) smartwatches that function nearly the same, the Fossil Q Explorist and Fossil Q Venture are the ones we recommend for most people. Similar models that differ mainly in size and design, these two Fossil watches offer style and band options for the widest range of tastes while performing as well as (or better than) anything else out there. They handle notifications and your responses without delay, provide all-day battery life, swiftly handle voice transcription and Google Assistant questions, and provide casual fitness tracking. Their buttons and screens are responsive. They look and feel like good watches, too, which is something we think most people want from a smartwatch at this point.
Built-in GPS and a great workout coach make the Huawei Watch 2 a great companion on long runs and intense workouts. You can leave your phone behind, too, thanks to onboard music storage and the ability to connect Bluetooth headphones to the watch. Like the LG Watch Sport, the Huawei Watch 2 has an LTE version, but unfortunately, Huawei isn't selling that model in the US yet.
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Basically, smartwatches are wearable-technology devices that maintain a relatively persistent wireless connection to your mobile device—usually a smart phone—and can receive notifications of incoming calls, texts, instant messages, social-network updates, and more, from that device. Some can also let you accept and conduct phone calls right on the watch. And even newer models (the Samsung Gear S, for one) can act as smart phones all on their own, without needing a paired phone nearby.
First and foremost, the Movado Connect runs on top of the standard Android Wear specs package — a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, 512mb of RAM, and 4GB of storage. It also includes a 1.39-inch 400×400 AMOLED display, 300mAh battery, and a typical array of sensors including an accelerometer and gyroscope. There’s also an ambient light sensor here and support for NFC, meaning you’ll be able to use Google Pay with this watch.

Why we like it: Garmin’s Vívosport fitness band gives you more (and more-accurate) fitness tracking features than a smartwatch, though you won’t be able to respond to messages and notifications or use apps on your wrist. The Vívosport lasts up to a week on a single battery charge, while an Apple Watch or Android Wear device requires overnight charging. Its screen always shows stats during a workout, while smartwatches like the Apple Watch typically turn off when you’re not looking at them. And you can wear a Vívosport while you sleep to get at least a rough view of how restful your night was without having to worry about charging it every morning. All these things give you a better overall picture of how active and healthy you are, and make it more convenient to wear one smaller device all the time: You won’t have to grab a phone to track a run, you won’t have to wear a large, utilitarian-looking GPS watch to work, and you’ll rarely have to worry about battery life during a long workout. The Vívosport also tracks heart rates and GPS location nearly as well as a GPS watch (with some exceptions), but in a smaller and less noticeable package.

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Samsung treads between smartwatch and fitness tracker, also packing in a heart rate sensor along with that GPS and its much-improved Samsung Health software. There's also the option of LTE (coming soon), if you wish for an untethered connection, with a standalone speaker for taking calls on the watch. It's now waterproof, too, adding swim tracking skills that are on par with the Watch Series 4.

If you want the app, notification, and style advantages of an Apple Watch but need better fitness tracking, you can upgrade to the Apple Watch Series 3 and get built-in GPS, as well as waterproofing that allows swim tracking. But the Series 3 costs more than a fitness tracker or even many running watches, and it still has compromises compared with a dedicated fitness tracker, such as a lack of dedicated physical buttons. We think serious athletes are better served by a fitness-specific device.
When you do switch to the OLED display, you are in TicWatch Pro’s Smart Mode, and you can perform all of the features and functions that are available in the smartwatch. However, switching to the low-power FTSN LCD display puts the watch in its Essential Mode. The nice thing is that when you switch back to Smart Mode. all of the heart rate and steps info gathered by the watch’s Essential Mode are synced up and transferred to the onboard Wear OS. As you might expect, the battery life in Essential Mode can last up to 30 days, while using the smartwatch in Smart Mode cuts that battery life down to just two days.
Apple has announced the Apple Watch Series 4. It’s the first real redesign of the wearable since Apple introduced it in 2014, but the changes aren’t so drastic that you won’t recognize it as an Apple Watch. The Series 4 comes with an upgraded display, and you can choose either a 40mm or 44mm model. Even though the screens on the new models are bigger, the overall body of the Watch is roughly the same as previous models, so you shouldn’t notice much of a difference on your wrist.
Smart watches are here to change the way you live. Now you can power through your workouts while the latest technology keeps track of your every move, check your calendar and keep an eye on the weather forecast wherever you are. You can also sync your smartphone with your watch, so you can check your texts, see who’s calling and receive notifications while keeping your iPhone 6 Plus safely tucked away.